I finished assembling the wing and wing floats, I installed the motor pod and the esc. As there will be no air flow I fear the esc may get hot... But with 33 volt (8S) I only need 45 amps to get 100 watts per pound so I will bench test the motor to see if the esc stays cool.

I tried to balance the bird with the recomended CG at 98 millimeters but it refuses to balance; it will tip forward or backward but will not stay still. The manual states the Mariner when balanced must have its nose down about 10 degrees.

Can anyone help me figuring out how to balance the Mariner? As with my other seaplanes with a pod (Seawind, etc.) I balanced the Mariner upside down. Should I try the other way?

That model looks very nice! Keep us posted on your progress. (Finally found a modeler with a workshop that looks like mine. )

As for posting JPG's, I've also ran into troubles trying to post large multi-megabyte photos in www.wattflyer.com. What has worked very well for me is to reduce the megabyte size of the photo. One very good, and FREE program for viewing JPG's and BMP, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO, TGA and camera raw files. The program can also change from a photo from one photo format to another format.

This program allows the user to edit, change, color correct, crop, resize and a lot of other stuff for these JPG photos. For resizing a photo, load up the photo in fastone, move your cursor against the left side of your computer screen for the pop-up menu. Look for "resize/resample", "Pixels" and set the width to 1600. For me, this has worked on every photo submitted to wattflyer.com. (Moving the mouse cursor to the top, bottom and right hand side also brings up other menus.)

25% of the chord back from the leading edge is a safe place to start. you'll probably experiment with cheating it back a bit. In small increments. When it gets hard to land and wants to float the entire length of your landing area you have gone too far.
I checked Tower Hobbies website and they don't even list Lanier as a brand. And they OWN em. Sheesh.

Jim, Great Planes killed the Lanier line, they brought the 40 size Stinger back as an ARF and are calling it a GP Stinger II. I would love to see them bring back the Mariner, but I always thought the 120 was over priced. The 40 size was a nice flyer.

You're right, I flew a .40 once-it was like flying a Stik.
Still, GP should offer the literature for download. What could it hurt. And I lump GP and Tower together because they are both divisions of the same company.

I have to say the Mariner 120 is a very high quality ARF; the hole fuselage is reinforced with fiberglass, hardwaure is good, and the size... It's BIG!
Too bad there are not many manufacturers that offer large seaplanes nowadays.
Incidently, I will probably maiden the Mariner 120 next week, so... Stay tuned!